Addressing electrical and interconnection problems with discrete wiring

Surface Mount Technology is becoming an essential tool in the design of high performance electronic systems. The older technologies such as multilayer boards have extreme difficulty meeting all requirements without compromise. For example, higher interconnection densities mean more layers, but this causes problems with manufacture, heat management, board thickness, and meeting the requirements of impedance control, signal speed and propagation delay. This balance of factors has led to the use of insulated wire to provide the point-to-point connections, i.e. discrete wired circuits. This paper discusses the manufacture and advantages of two particular type, namely Multiwire and Microwire. Microwire uses new techniques such as Lased, rather than drilled holes to increase packing density, thus paving the way to a new generation of board